Cool: United Airlines' Africa, India, And Hawaii Expansion

San Francisco to Bangalore is now United's current longest route in terms of distance, beating Houston to Sydney.

United flew IAD-ACC from 2010 onwards. This is a route reinstatement, not a new route.

San Francisco to Bangalore will also be SFO's longest flight, edging out SFO-SIN.

United also flew IAD-Lagos between 2010-2012 or so. at some point I think it was tagged with the flight to Accra.

I was hoping for something new out of LAX :-/

Excellent job with Bangalore and Maui from SFO AND EWR!!!!

I suspect these route announcements are just the tip of the iceberg.

Aside from US military contracts which were operated by Delta (hence their reasoning of Haneda, because it's closer to Yokota), United had managed to dominate US based corporate contracts to East Asia from Apple to Disney, had managed to level the playing field to the point of being neck at neck with Singapore Airlines. But this isn't about competition with Star Alliance members. In fact I think United and Singapore Airlines will manage to joint venture, after all they allowed ANA and Singapore to JV.

I do think they will want to widen the gap between themselves and Delta, before Delta makes their move to acquire JetBlue (to turn them into the new Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Pacific).

As a brand consultant, I think Delta's weakest aspect is its brand from a global perspective. They'll have to change tbis somehow.

@Jason - United launched both Lagos and Accra in June 2010 as IAD-ACC-LOS. They pulled out of Ghana in 2012 and maintained Lagos as non-stop from IAD and later IAH.

"I wonder if American will reconsider Bangalore flights now that United is flying there as well."

I suppose that depends on how much traffic Microsoft would generate, as well as connecting traffic. SFO-BLR will be nicknamed Silicon Valley Express in no time and will be filled just by O&D traffic.

I told everyone BKK was impossible. No need to get excited about Thailand... government will not allow it.

Good gosh United, what the hell are you thinking of!? Ghana and Nigeria. Yup, yup, sure the vacation spots Americans want to go to. And that Hawai’i service, you’re being real optimistic there, unless the start date is 2022. Let’s get real, do they think they’re PanAm or what? And if you’re doing all these long hauls, you have GOT to put in more leg room for these long hauls....and more substantial meal service....and get some real planes to fly these routs, like the 777-300ER and push those seats further apart!

First time I've seen a red herring disguised as a llama.

Lucky - I'm curious about the choice of planes here. More specifically the absence of 77W on the India routes. At this point do you think they have that section of their stable pretty well utilized? Or do we think it's just that they're testing the waters with load factors with a relatively smaller and more efficient plane (787-9)? Given that 77W largely has a better business class so the yield becomes important, in addition to the opportunity cost. I know that UA's EWR BOM is a 15 hour jaunt is operated by the 77W.

It'll be interesting to see if SFO-BLR follows AI pattern where they fly different directions on the outbound and return (circle the globe).

I was waiting for Global Ghana Airlines to fly ORD - ACC 🙁

Will SFO-BLR-MLE become the most efficient way to get from the west coast of the US to the Maldives?

I dont understand most of these. I dont see them as viable or profitable in today's world and nothing is changing by March. Count me as a skeptic

It continues to amaze me how far United stretches the distance of their aeroplanes. The 777-200ER flights from Newark to Delhi & Mumbai, the 787-9 from California to Singapore, and now San Francisco to India's tech hub in Bangalore.

Ben do you know of any weight restrictions on that SFO-BLR route? I can’t imagine that route is being operated by a 787-9 without any restrictions at all.

"This complements United’s Kona service out of Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, and San Francisco."

You wrote this twice, the second time (potentially?) erroneously under the "Newark to Maui" sub-section. I'm assuming you meant to write something else.

@flyingrohit, Qantas operates PER-LHR on the 787-9, which is quite a bit longer. Stop flying

Hi Everyone, I am trying to work in some political commentary to this thread but so far I game up empty handed. Anyone care to help?

“This is exciting, since Africa, isn’t a continent that got much love from US airlines in the past.”

Africa hasn’t received much love from US airlines, since Pan Am criss-crossed the continent, in the early 70s.

At the time, Pan Am’s African network served:

Dakar
Monrovia
Abidjan
Cotonou
Accra
Lagos
Douala
Libreville
Kinshasa
Johannesburg
Entebbe
Nairobi
Dar Es Salaam

Matt - use your brains a little will ya! All of these flights are to areas that are governed by non-white individuals, thus following the logic of our esteemed POTUS they would all be classified as "shithole" regions.

So easy, just so easy LOL!

@Fred, thank you! I can breathe a sigh of relief.

@Milo: not just Microsoft, also Amazon.

@Ray: You forgot to mention Houston-Sydney

I hope United flies Polaris with the DEL and BLR routes, not those 777-200ERs.

I’m all for creative new routes, and on balance this one is a mixed bag in terms of profitability
1. IAD-ACC and IAD-LOS will flop quickly. The demand just isn’t there, especially in the covid dominated next year from now (at least). A triangle route maybe could have cut it, but individually it’s a dead end.
2. EWR-OGG is very clever. I’m surprised no one thought of it until now (out of jfk for dL and aa of course)
3. EWR-JNB also a masterstroke. SA is a very popular destination, when this nightmare is over, and given SA’s collapse it will be lucrative
4. SFO-BLR: not sure. On the one hand it seems like overkill on Blr given that India is already served, on the other it could work given tech connectivity from Silicon Valley. Honestly it would be better as a triangle route with some other place for double demand.

Only time will tell!

OGG-EWR? A nice way to spell payload restrictions.

It looks like UA might also be targeting some governmental business travel with these new routes from Washington to Africa (I know Lagos isn't the capital of Nigeria, but Abuja doesn't have a major international Airport so anyone going there would probably be flying into Lagos regardless). Frankly, I don't know how lucrative this market segment is but I would imagine governmental business travel would recover faster than private sector business travel.

@Weymar M Osborne - Abuja absolutely has a major international airport which is served by 12 international airlines (plus the Nigerian carriers), and processes over 5 million passengers per year. Delta used to serve Abuja with a 757 via Dakar (and then a 767 via Accra) in the not too distant past.

@John G, @Matt - Don't underestimate the demand out of IAD from government agencies and NGOs. This helped fill the SAA flight to ACC and DAK en route to JNB for years. DC market is not all about leisure traffic and global financial hubs. IAD has supported some surprising routes for this reason in the past (like KWI).